{"id":253504,"date":"2026-03-20T18:06:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T18:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=253504"},"modified":"2026-03-27T17:10:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T17:10:26","slug":"from-wmgs-netflix-deal-to-bmgs-anthropic-lawsuit-its-mbws-weekly-round-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/from-wmgs-netflix-deal-to-bmgs-anthropic-lawsuit-its-mbws-weekly-round-up\/","title":{"rendered":"From WMG’s Netflix deal to BMG’s Anthropic lawsuit\u2026 it’s MBW’s weekly round-up"},"content":{"rendered":"Welcome to Music Business Worldwide\u2019s Weekly Round-up \u2013 where we make sure you caught the five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days. MBW\u2019s Round-up is exclusively supported by BMI, a global leader in performing rights management, dedicated to supporting songwriters, composers and publishers and championing the value of music.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/em><\/strong>\n
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This week, BMG filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against AI giant Anthropic, alleging that the company unlawfully copied and used its compositions to train its large language models.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Warner Music Group and Netflix formed a creative partnership<\/a> to make documentaries based on WMG’s roster of artists and songwriters.<\/p>\n

Plus, the IFPI published its Global Music Report 2026, revealing that global recorded music revenues hit $31.7 billion in 2025.<\/p>\n

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Elsewhere, Universal Music Group Chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge became the first music executive to take the stage at NVIDIA’s GTC conference \u2013 dubbed the “Super Bowl of AI.”<\/p>\n

Also this week, Tencent Music Entertainment revealed that its higher-priced ‘Super VIP’ subscriber base surpassed 20 million by the end of 2025.<\/p>\n

Here are some of the biggest headlines from the past few days…<\/p>\n

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1. BMG SUES ANTHROPIC FOR INFRINGEMENT, ALLEGING AI FIRM’S $380B VALUATION WAS BUILT ON ‘STOLEN COPYRIGHTED WORKS’<\/a><\/h6>\n

BMG<\/a>\u00a0Rights Management has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Anthropic, the AI giant behind the Claude AI chatbot.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Bertelsmann-owned music company alleges that Anthropic unlawfully copied and used its compositions, including lyrics, to train its large language models.<\/p>\n

The 47-page complaint, filed on Tuesday (March 17) in the Northern District of California, cites 493 allegedly infringed musical compositions, including\u00a0What a Wonderful World, Kryptonite, You Can\u2019t Always Get What You Want, Uptown Funk, Sympathy for the Devil,<\/em>\u00a0and more.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit is the latest to be filed against Anthropic by a major music publisher… (MBW<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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2. GLOBAL RECORDED MUSIC REVENUES HIT $31.7B IN 2025, UP 6.4% YOY; USERS OF PAID MUSIC SUBSCRIPTIONS REACH 837M<\/a><\/h6>\n

Global recorded music revenues reached\u00a0USD $31.7 billion\u00a0in 2025. That\u2019s according to the\u00a0IFPI, the organization that represents the recording industry worldwide.<\/p>\n

Figures released on Wednesday (March 18) in IFPI\u2019s Global Music Report 2026<\/em>\u00a0show that global recorded music revenues grew by\u00a06.4% YoY\u00a0in 2025 \u2013 an improvement on the\u00a04.7%\u00a0rate of growth\u00a0posted in 2024 \u2014 marking the global industry\u2019s eleventh consecutive year of growth.<\/p>\n

The report also shows that global recorded music revenues grew in every region, with double-digit growth in four regions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

IFPI\u2019s report identifies paid subscription streaming as the key driver of growth globally… (MBW<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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3. SIR LUCIAN GRAINGE JUST BECAME THE FIRST MUSIC EXEC AT NVIDIA’S ‘SUPER BOWL OF AI’. HERE’S WHAT HE SAID.<\/a><\/h6>\n

Universal Music Group\u2018s Chairman & CEO\u00a0Sir Lucian Grainge has become the first music industry leader to take the stage at NVIDIA\u2019s GTC conference \u2013 described by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang as the \u201cSuper Bowl of AI\u201d.<\/p>\n

Grainge sat down with NVIDIA\u2019s VP and General Manager for Media & Entertainment, Richard Kerris, for a fireside chat entitled \u2018Building the Future of Music and AI\u2019 at the San Jose conference on Tuesday (March 17).<\/p>\n

Here are five things MBW learned from the conversation… (MBW<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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4. TENCENT MUSIC NOW HAS 20M+ ‘SUPER VIP’ SUBSCRIBERS. HERE’S WHAT THAT MEANS FOR CHINA’S LARGEST MUSIC STREAMER.<\/a><\/h6>\n

Tencent Music Entertainment\u2018s (TME) \u2018Super VIP\u2019 tier has just hit a major new milestone.<\/p>\n

TME published its Q4 and full-year 2025 results on Tuesday (March 17), revealing that its SVIP subscribers surpassed 20 million\u00a0by year-end \u2013\u00a0up from the\u00a015 million\u00a0the company\u00a0reported at the end of Q2, and just\u00a010 million\u00a0in Q3 2024.<\/p>\n

That growth trajectory \u2013 doubling in barely over a year \u2013 tells us something important about the appetite for higher-priced music streaming, and offers a real-world blueprint for what higher-priced streaming tiers could deliver.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what the numbers show… (MBW<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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5. WARNER MUSIC GROUP INKS EXCLUSIVE NETFLIX DEAL TO MAKE ARTIST AND SONGWRITER DOCUMENTARIES<\/a><\/span><\/h6>\n

Warner Music Group (WMG) has signed what it calls an “exclusive multi-year first-look deal” with Netflix.<\/p>\n

Under the creative partnership, the companies say the streamer will develop “documentary series and films exploring the lives, music and legacies of WMG’s legendary and contemporary artists and songwriters.”<\/p>\n

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WMG is partnering with Unigram, a film, theatre, and music production company run by Amanda Ghost and Gregor Cameron, to serve as the production arm for WMG’s long-form programming. Ghost founded Unigram in 2015 in partnership with Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries, which is the majority owner of WMG.<\/p>\n

As per a press release, WMG and Unigram will work to develop each project in collaboration with the artist or their estates… (MBW)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/i><\/a><\/figure>Partner message: MBW\u2019s Weekly Round-up is supported by BMI<\/span>,\u00a0the\u00a0global leader in performing rights management,\u00a0dedicated to supporting songwriters, composers and publishers and championing the value of music.\u00a0Find\u00a0out more about\u00a0BMI<\/span>\u00a0here<\/span>.\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The biggest headlines from the past few days…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7380,"featured_media":237810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[131263],"class_list":["post-253504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-mbws-weekly-round-up"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7380"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253504"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254165,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253504\/revisions\/254165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}